The 35,000-square-foot School of Religion building will be up and ready for occupancy by fall break, according to President Paul Conn.

Conn also announced the the building’s parking lot should be paved and ready to be filled by the end of this week.

“This should solve some of the parking problems,” Conn said. “However, for the next few days, we’ll be short on parking.”

The university began construction on the two-story building at the end of last year. By the end of spring, the structure of the building had been completed.

The School of Religion building will host most religion classes and include a 200-seat lecture hall, a large student commons area on the main floor, a commons area with a reading room on the second floor, and 34 faculty offices. The building will also add four meeting rooms, two seminar rooms, a preaching lab, a computer center and another Cafe A La Carte to campus.

“When students leave for fall break, the faculty will take that weekend and move everything over,” Conn said. “When students come back from fall break, they will start in their new classrooms.”

The project has been a part of the Press Toward the Mark campaign. The campaign publicly began during Celebration 2006, with a goal to raise $25 million for the construction of a new science building, School of Religion building and Health Clinic, as well as enlarge the campus space.

The campaign goal also included a new $2 million computer infrastructure system across campus and to add $2 million in endowed scholarships. The university hopes to wrap up the campaign in 2010.

“It appears that we are going to be a few weeks earlier than [scheduled],” Conn said. “We were operating with the original construction schedule, but we’ve just had a really, really wonderful construction season.”

Many religion classes have begun in other parts of campus, however after the new building is finished, some classes will move meeting spots in order to start using the building later this semester.

“We have an alternative set of class schedules. Lets say if you’re in a religion class that meets in the Humanities 206,” Conn said, “Then if it’s going to moved to the religion building, when we get ready to do that, we’ll publish a list and that list has already been worked out.”